


Striking The Match

by goldleaf1066



Category: Hannibal (TV)
Genre: Europe, Hannigram - Freeform, M/M, Mild and brief description of animal cruelty, Mild descriptions of gore/violence, Murder Husbands, Sexuality Crisis, Sharing a Bed, Sort Of, season 4
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-03-19
Updated: 2019-03-19
Packaged: 2019-11-24 01:57:02
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,412
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18159971
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/goldleaf1066/pseuds/goldleaf1066
Summary: On an evening in Prague Will finally lets himself have what he needs.





	Striking The Match

This is how it starts. The room is hung with shadows thrown at the walls from the lamps on the coffee table. The drapes, ceiling-to-floor, part enough to let in the night air and the jangle of the street-sounds below. The shuffle of footsteps, the clatterhum of a distant passing tram. A dog barks, once. A clock ticks. Will Graham stands at the window and looks down at the cobble-stone pavement through the bars of the balcony railing. Everything is golden-dark: the colour of the light, the Dutch-braided hair of the woman walking beneath the apartment, the sluggish tumult of whisky in the tumbler that he keeps in motion, wrist rocking, never able, even now, to keep all parts of himself still at the same time. A shudder, a twitch, the dry click in his inner ear when he swallows. A double blink. The hitch of a breath. His heart.

Two hours ago, he was wrist-deep in the offal of Tomáš Kasner who had told him to fuck off when Will had asked him to stop yanking the leash of his dog, shouting at it when it cowered from him. The animal had been terrified.

Three hours ago, Will was drinking a Pálava alone at an outdoor bar in a sunlit square in the city. He was any middle-aged middle-class tourist doing Europe or doing nothing but watch the day bustle around him, a ruckus of sunburn and short dresses and the sweetness of cigarette smoke.

One hour ago, he had fed the terrier and tied it up outside a veterinarian’s practice on the other side of the city. He left water and the forecast was clear. Twenty-five minutes ago he scraped Tomáš from beneath his fingernails under the shower, watched him drain away to nothing. Diminished, deservingly.

“I wish you had called me. I would have liked to have been with you.” Hannibal Lecter approaches on quiet feet from the rear of the apartment. He pours himself a glass of whiskey from the bottle Will has left on the table. 

Will turns his head, enough to show Hannibal the glint of streetlamp on the silk of the scar on his cheek. “Jealous?” He looks back out, at the skyline this time, the corrugated terminator between rooftops and stars. “Or afraid I’ll get a taste for going solo?”

Hannibal has bathed recently too, Will can smell him as he stands beside him. Soap, and heat. He takes a drink.

“Disappointed that I’ll only be able to imagine how you looked.”

“I’m sure you’ll manage. Shall I spin you some lore?”

Hannibal lifts his glass to his lips. “Later, perhaps.” He scents the whiskey, sips.

Outside a breeze has begun building confidence, reaching through the window and tousling the drying ends of Will’s hair. He pulls the curtain open wider, leaning against the window frame. It takes him a long time to say it.

“The point at which I felt I could survive this on my own is a distant sun.” He glances at Hannibal with eyes only. “Its warmth is just a memory.”

“There are other ways to stay warm,” says Hannibal. He opens his half of the curtains. He’s wearing simple slacks, his shirt rolled at the sleeves and open at the collar. Subdued. The streetlight paints his face in balmy orange glow.

“No heat like the fire within,” Will says. “You fanned the flames.”

Hannibal smiles. “And you struck the match.”

Will closes his eyes. It’s too late to be summer now, and the air is cooler than ever. He’s been toying with the idea of suggesting they move on, further south this time. He was built for the Louisiana swelter with its brimming air, its discomfort comforting him. Prague has been good to them, but too busy. Easy to hide amongst the cacophony of tourists, easy to be caught. Maybe something rural this time, he’d like to spend more time outdoors. He actually misses Italy.

This apartment is old with high ceilings and no air conditioning. For Will it was bliss around mid-August, lying on the couch under the window, molten. Distracted by unceasing dampness and torpidity. The lounge is open plan with fashionably minimalist furniture and architectural lighting, a kitchenette in one corner. The moulding on the ceiling is superb, the bathroom not so much. There are two bedrooms. 

Hannibal has been quite still this whole time, watching the night-time activity below. A cab rumbles past, license plate crooked. “This was your first kill alone since we’ve been together.”

Together means a lot of things. Fugitives, partners in crime. Friends. The other thing. Will sighs. “I couldn’t really resist that one. Chalk it up to poor judgement.”

Hannibal frowns. “I’ve never felt cause to question your judgement, Will.”

Will looks at him properly now, Hannibal in profile, the silhouette of him something that he sees even when he closes his eyes. How he has in turns hated and yearned for it like the drowned man yearns for a lungful of sky. He feels a pulse of need vibrate through him. This man. His friend. No other. “That’s nice to hear from someone. Considering my recent choices.”

Hannibal takes another drink. Will can see the workings of his oesophagus as the liquor makes its way downward. His gaze rests in the divot of Hannibal’s collarbones. “A little rude, Will.”

“You like me because I’m rude.”

Hannibal narrows his eyes at him. “In part.”

Will reaches over and takes the tumbler from Hannibal, setting it and his own on the coffee table beside the whiskey bottle. He’s still not very good at this, he was never the smoothest, but Hannibal saves him from second-guessing, fumbling, from convincing himself he needs to convince himself he wants this by catching his elbow when he straightens and pulling him, gently, into his orbit.

“It’s one of a number of crises I’ve not yet resolved,” Will says, and Hannibal tilts his head. Will’s hands are steady where they fall on Hannibal’s waist, for the most part.

“And which one are you working on now?”

“You know which one.” Will’s fingers constrict into fists, bunching up the fabric of Hannibal’s shirt, and he untucks his chin, and bares his face to Hannibal at the angle predetermined by their slight difference in height. “I want,” Will tries, then trails off. 

“For once,” Hannibal says, arms still at his side, “I can’t help you unravel it.” Once he released Will’s arm he had stood passively, and Will hasn’t bolted yet. “I am biased toward you.”

“I know all about your bias.”

“Call it a conflict of interest if it makes you feel better.”

Will lets go of Hannibal’s waist, takes a step back, half-sitting on the railing facing him with his back to the night. “I admire your ethics,” he says, his sardonicism settling easily on a well-trodden path. 

“This,” Hannibal says, gesturing between them, “would always be enough.” The lapping banks of the Vltava. Chiffonade of basil created with increasing competence under tutelage and knife. The gurgle of blood in a mouth. The gusts of unsynchronised panting in an otherwise empty room.

“For you or for me?”

“It’s not a wholly undiscovered country,” Hannibal says, sliding his hands into his pants pockets. Will nods, incisors pushing into his lower lip briefly. It had happened, once before, on a cloudless night somewhere down in Spořilov. Arterial spray arcing across Will’s chest and face and Hannibal’s feet sliding against the gore on the tiles. It hadn’t gone well, and there would be no changing of this victim into anything other than a carcass. He had fought back well enough that Will nearly lost an eye and already the flower of a bruise around it had begun to bloom. When the victim was a ruin at their feet, when they stood, shaking, dripping, when Hannibal had reached for Will and his clasp had been heavy on Will’s shoulder, Will had heard the ringing of the dropped knife on the floor before he even registered his grasp loosening. He’d dug his fingers into the skin at the nape of Hannibal’s neck, had lifted his face to him, and kissed him so desperately, finally. A crime of passion.

“I remember feeling as though if I didn’t do it that the fire would go out.”

“That’s not the same as wanting to do it.”

“It’s not how I feel now.”

“How do you feel now?”

Will can’t stop the smirk. “Confused. But would it be love if I wasn’t?”

Hannibal’s smile ghosts across his face. He trails a fingertip along Will’s scar. It has healed reasonably, aesthetically unpleasant rather than anything more profound. No loss of facial function, no ebbing in the tics that sough through Will unchecked and unabashedly. “Would you sleep beside me tonight?”

Will nods again, this decision not hard to make. It’s something they’ve done, sometimes. One bed or the other. Lately each in their own. But sometimes they come together, a binary star system, each body enslaved by the pull of its companion. Lie in the dark. Listen to the breathing. Place a heart-line over a heartbeat. Talk. Sleep. Dream. 

Only these things.

They abandon the window. Hannibal walks a little ahead of him, their arms an oxbow between them, the confluence of knuckles and palms lolling. Hannibal’s bedroom is unlit, the shutters are closed and the décor is muted. When Will reaches for the light-switch Hannibal stops him.

“Afraid I’ll spook?”

Hannibal moves toward the bed. “Do you feel spooked?”

Will smiles painfully. “I feel like I’m walking over deep water on ever thinning ice. The braver I become the more the cracks spread out beneath my feet.”

“That's your modus operandi.” Hannibal is sitting on the edge of the mattress, reaching for him.

“Something like that,” Will mutters, avoiding Hannibal’s arm and sitting beside him. He puts his face in his hands and breathes sharply through them once. His voice is muffled. “I’m not trying to mess you around.”

“And yet,” Hannibal says, unbuttoning his shirt instead. The sadness in his words startles Will.

It began when a night terror crept on cats’ paws into Will’s slumber weeks earlier, shunting him into consciousness the way a too suddenly-stopped car thumps its occupants unreadily into the next instant. The calamity of thunder that rolled in his dreams was unfurling above the apartment in a summer storm, roof creaking, wind whining. Will wasn’t afraid of it, but the slow ebb of horror sat too ill with him to simply flip the pillow to the cool side and go back to sleep. He’d snapped out of the dream quickly enough, but it hadn’t snapped out of him so willingly.

The soles of his feet left misted imprints on the parquet as he padded from his bedroom into the one adjacent. He loomed over Hannibal’s prone form in the sheets and didn’t have to second-guess waking him because Hannibal had already opened his eyes, their transformation from bleary to alert alchemical in the shock of lightning from the window. 

Will hovered, offered a ‘D’jyoumindifI…” and was clambering into the empty space beside Hannibal before really waiting for the answer. It was too hot still, the crackle of night air palpable as it danced across his skin, a lazy waltz of summer breaking above and around them as his thoughts spun in his head. “Bad dream,” he mumbled by way of explanation, as if Will Graham at this point had to apologise for this. As if Hannibal Lecter at this point would object to even a simulacrum of intimacy from his direction. Hannibal’s hand found his in the sheets, and when Will woke hours later they were curled around one another, a calf beneath a shin, elbows and ankles and knots and crosses.

This had been before the kiss. And then after it, when Will had shied like a skittish foal and slept alone for nights on end he had missed it despite himself. 

Will takes over unbuttoning Hannibal's shirt.

“Would you catch me if I fell through?”

“Have I ever failed to?”

Will’s voice shakes, tears suddenly smudging his view. His fingers are a tangle, writhing against the placket. “I won’t tolerate your absence.”

Hannibal’s palm is a cradle for Will’s jaw, his thumb drawing maps against his temple. “Then what are you afraid of?”

“Flipping the coin and not knowing what side I want it to land on.” The shirt falls open and Will's arms sort themselves into his lap.

“The coin may land on its edge,” Hannibal says, moving up to stroke through Will’s hair. It’s still a little heavy from his shower, the curls flatter. “Transmutation. A balance between something rare and something eternal.”

“I’m aware we don’t have eternity.” They will be caught, in years, months, days, minutes. It’s what jolts Will from nightmares and feeds his desire for grounding. A hand beneath the sheets. Elbows and ankles.

“Not in this world,” Hannibal says. It’s only the most delicate urging but Will submits to it, face tilting as directed by the pressure exerted by Hannibal on his occipital bone. He leans forward and his mouth presses against Hannibal’s briefly, eyes open, his ribs primed to shatter under the hammer of his heart.

Hannibal’s eyes stay shut when Will pulls back, filing this away, no doubt. 

“Come to bed,” Will says, edging back onto the mattress, inelegant in his undressing. He flings open the bedsheets and lies down facing Hannibal beneath them. He is naked, and as he watches Hannibal rid himself of his slacks and underwear to join him imagines their life after tonight, whimsical flashes of kissing like any honeymooners on a golden-hour balcony. Then more carnal flights of fancy: teeth bared against bitten lips, a concave back and the cant of pelvis, the burn of the bedlinen beneath his knees. This new dread is languid in his belly, fear and loss and need and lust all looped like a snake in need of the day’s heat to uncoil.

This time Hannibal strikes the match. He pulls Will toward him as he gets into the bed. 

“Tell me now.”

Will lies close, their heads the illusion of the vase and two faces on the edge of their pillows. Hannibal’s hand lies on the mattress mid-way between them, Will’s bumping against it before stilling.

“He was generally unpleasant. Brusque. Rude to wait staff. Impatient. Nothing exceptional.”

“And you followed him.”

“Three days, on and off. Just to see; I had an inkling. I strolled where he strolled and ate where he ate.” Will thinks of the Pálava and the short dresses, the holiday hubbub falling away like a chrysalis when Tomáš took his seat at a table in front of him.

“What caught your attention?”

“He didn’t tip.”

“Many don’t.”

“He kicked his dog. Spoke unkindly to it. Dragging it by its leash, punished it for trying its best. Threw a stone at a stray cat too,” Will adds. His little finger has hooked itself over Hannibal’s.

“Cruelty to innocents is a particular brand of presumptuousness. A line exists between the pig and the one who through ugliness lowers himself to be but one.”

“Animals know no better.” 

“No such thing as a bad dog.”

“Only bad masters.” Will scowls. 

Hannibal covers Will’s hand with his own, nudging him back on course. “Tell me what you did.”

“I wanted him to know how it feels.” Will slides his leg forward, hooking the top of his foot behind Hannibal’s knee. “I kicked him, here.” His hand leaves their loose lovers’ knot and lands on Hannibal’s throat, not forcefully, but not light either. “I held him, here.” He can feel Hannibal’s Adam’s apple bobbing against his palm. He presses more firmly, Hannibal’s breath rushing from his nostrils to dance across the hair on Will’s forearm. 

“And then?” Hannibal manages, fingers closing in a loop around Will’s wrist in a circlet from ulna to radius.

Will releases him. His hand lingers above Hannibal’s cheek, held in the oar-rest of his grip. 

“It felt… necessary. Like scratching an itch.”

“But unsatisfying.”

Will lets his hand droop, his fingers trailing over the hinge of Hannibal’s jaw, tips probing into the shorter hair there. “Poor judgement, remember? I should have called you. I wanted you to see. I wanted you to know me a little more.”

“I see you, Will,” Hannibal says. “I know you.”

“Tell me what you see.”

Hannibal pushes Will’s arm away gently, using it to guide Will onto his back as he sits up and looks down at him. “You’re burning brightly.” He shifts, the sheets slipping as he plants a knee either side of Will’s lower thighs. “Your thoughts vibrate so urgently I can feel the shape of them.” He leans down, supporting himself with a hand by each of Will’s shoulders on the mattress. Will is breathing consciously, aware of his tongue restlessly examining the backs of his teeth. When Hannibal's hips meet his Will jolts beneath him, hands rising automatically as if to push him away. He catches himself in time, and they float there above the small of Hannibal’s back.

“The taste of your fear has changed,” Hannibal continues. “It’s something far more delicate that now hangs itself behind your eyes.”

“I’m afraid of losing this, now I’ve found it,” Will says. 

“Losing you-” Hannibal starts and doesn’t get much further. There is something in his voice, a catch, a waver so small and so devastating Will is sure no-one else but he could ever notice it. 

“You see a monster,” Will whispers.

“I see a mirror.” 

Hannibal is so near, his face above Will’s, hair a curtain sweeping over Will’s forehead. Will is pressed beneath him, the iron bound to the lodestone. Will tilts himself, arcs upward and closes the gap finally. This time, the third time, the kiss is longed-for and sublime. Hannibal curves around him, his hands the conch shell from which the song of Will’s features explodes: his gaze is spectral, his mouth wanton and willing. Great shudders fall through Will when he thinks about what’s he’s doing and what would happen if they were caught, right now in this moment; what would be thought of him, of them, by people he used to care about if they walked in and saw him and Hannibal together like this. There would be no mistaking their intentions, there would be no going back. 

The match is struck; he falls through the ice. Will lowers his hands down into the dip of Hannibal’s lower back, holding them together as their legs form a welter of bedclothes and bent knees and their kissing becomes messy. Will is panting through his nose: this panic is welcome. He lets the torrent of exhilaration rush through him as he grabs a fistful of Hannibal’s hair with one hand and clamps needy fingers around his ass cheek with the other. This is weird and good and weird and Will wants nothing more than more.

He kisses Hannibal, slack-jawed and tongue on top of tongue. Will wonders, distantly, how he tastes to Hannibal before Hannibal’s weight above him changes and he begins to grind him down into dust. Will’s eyes roll back as Hannibal’s teeth dig into his shoulder. When white light flashes beneath his eyelids Will can’t be sure if the storm has not returned, whether it’s lightning above them or his own climax that so throws him, his body lurching and his voice alien. He can taste blood, and when he comes back to life a little more with Hannibal collapsed and breathing hard on his chest, he’s very aware of the places their bodies touch, and what else is mingling now with the sweat that pools between them.

Further south, somewhere hotter next time so he can be reminded of this.

Hannibal rolls off him and they look at each other. 

“A mirror,” he says again, with a reverence that would sound jarring coming from anyone else but Hannibal can get away with anything. His hair is a riot of strange angles and his gaze surges through Will, filling him up and wringing him out like the cloth Will scrubbed his fingers with after feeding Tomáš to his dog outside the vets’. 

He feels no regret, not even fear in these new minutes on the other side of the line. Only limbless and aching for the other half of him.

This is how it starts.

**Author's Note:**

> This pic was un-beta'd so please accept my apologies for any egregious punctuation errors (or any others - I am super rusty). I never can master semicolons/colons and I bet it's obvious. 
> 
> I adore this show/pairing/fandom. This fic isn't particularly deep but it's the first thing I've finished in about 4 years so I'm going with it!


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